In this blog I will describe how we set up source code version control using Git and Bitbucket.

Our Needs

We wanted a few things for our source code management:

• Version control
• Backup
• Online access to all code and revisions
• Full access control
• Fast

Elements of the Solution

These elements played a part in our approach:

• Distinguishing between development environment and production environment
• SSH: developer keys and deployment keys
• Shop repositories and extension repositories

The Hosting Service

Choosing Git to do source code control is a no-brainer these days. Since it is a distributed version control system, it ensures that the full repository is copied to all the locations where it is used. So the source code is safe. Completely fathoming its power takes a lot of time, but the day-to-day tasks are easy to learn.

Github and Bitbucket are the most common online source code hosting services. Github is the most popular of the two for publicly accessible source code, but our source code needed to be private. Bitbucket provides free access to unlimited public and private repositories for up to 5 users. It’s fast and provides a useful web interface. We are very happy with Bitbucket 🙂

Two Types of Repositories

We create a separate repository for each shop. This repository leans very strongly on its .gitignore file. This simple file determines which files to include into the repository. We follow Alan Kent’s recommendations in this. Most importantly, the vendor directory is excluded from the repository. This includes the Magento 2 core, its dependencies, and all public third-party extensions.

The shop repository contains our shop-specific custom code, located in app/code and app/design. Also included are the paid third-party extensions that the shop uses.

Next to these shop repositories we also develop common extensions that we can use for several shops. Each of these extensions will get its own repository and is managed by Composer, just like the public third-party extensions.

Taken together, the shop consists of a main repository and zero or more of our own extensions. These extensions live inside the vendor directory and each has its own Git checkout.